Israel and the Intifada

In his column (“At Seder, a Different Image for Israel,” Op-Ed Page, April 17), Arthur Waskow suggests that the Passover Seder be viewed as a mirror image of the Jewish people. He then places before us a reflector of his own taken from the hall of mirrors of an amusement park. The mirror he has chosen is itself distorted and distorting.

Waskow’s reflection on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is based on forced analogies with Israel’s bondage some 31 centuries ago. By implication, he parallels the oppressions of the biblical Pharaoh with the dilemmas confronting Israel’s control of the intifada , equates the chains, dungeons, and death by drowning of the Hebrew slaves with the encounters between the Israeli militia and the Molotov cocktail- and stone- throwing of the Palestinians. He sees in the economic and political strains suffered by Israel the punitive shadow of the 10 plagues.

Waskow presents a false symmetry. Which Egyptian Pharaoh proposed free elections for the Hebrew citizens of Goshen as the prime minister of Israel publicly advocated before his cabinet last week for the Palestinians? In which Egyptian court were appeals on behalf of the arrested heard? Which public media in Egypt allowed open, vigorous, and full dissent in the manner of the Israeli press? Which slaves in Egypt were elected to its legislative bodies in contrast to Arabs and admirers of Yasser Arafat who are members of the Knesset?

Are these the marks of Pharaonic repression? Are the two situations remotely equivalent? Unquestionably, there are injustices committed against the supporters of the intifada , but sympathy for the Palestinians does not call for the calumny of Israel.

What further saddens this reader is the exploitation of the sanctums and manipulation of religious sensibilities to twist the Seder text into political pamphleteering. Waskow’s false equivalences cynically distort the tradition of the past and turn a blind eye to the tragic complexities of the present.

RABBI HAROLD M.

SCHULWEIS

Encino